Abe Lucas healthy=tackle less a need on Seahawks’ needy O-line. So why is TNT mocking one?
Just because their general manager called it “a bit of a lazy narrative” doesn’t mean improving the offensive line isn’t a primary need for the Seahawks.
“I think it’s an area of need, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s been very well-documented throughout the spring,” John Schneider said Monday, three days before Seattle has the 18th pick in the first round of the 2025 NFL draft.
He said that immediately before the GM gave his “lazy narrative” assessment. It raised eyebrows (if not ire) across the Pacific Northwest.
Yet along that problematic O-line, it does not appear tackle is among the needs.
Healthier Abe Lucas is half the reason for that.
The 26-year-old starting right tackle is far better off this offseason than he was last — or than he’s been since Seattle drafted him in the third round in 2022 out of Washington State.
Wednesday, Lucas was among new starting quarterback Sam Darnold, new wide receiver Cooper Kupp and Seahawks teammates grinding through conditioning drills in the weight room and on the field. It was the players’ first day of voluntary offseason workouts at the team’s Virginia Mason Athletic Center headquarters.
The Seahawks’ website posted a photo of Lucas on the exercise bike, pushing his right knee and body through the first day of offseason workouts.
This time last year, Lucas wasn’t with his teammates. His was on his own. He was on his long rehabilitation from surgery on that right knee. He had the operation in January 2024, to fix years of pain his former coach Pete Carroll once described as chronic.
“I’m going into my offseason basically injury-free,” Lucas told The News Tribune on the first day of this offseason this winter.
“Still got some recovery to do, but feeling good. Feeling ready for what’s ahead.”
Lucas said he had surgery to repair tendon damage in the knee. His surgeons told him when he had it in January 2024 it would be a full 12 months of recovery.
That meant when he returned to practice in late November of 2024 then started the final seven games of the Seahawks’ season he was playing through pain.
“Tendon surgeries take a long time to heal,” the former standout at Archbishop Murphy in Mill Creek said. “Officially, the official timeline recovery is about a year. ...It wasn’t that it was hurt. It was just still healing.
“That’s where injuries are a little bit funky. You know, people think you get back and you’re automatically healthy. That’s just not really the case.”
Not with Lucas in 2024.
But in 2025 it is.
“I think all things considered, what I came back from, I think I did what I did fairly well, you know?” he said.
Now he, coach Mike Macdonald, new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, new, veteran running back coordinator Rick Dennison and new, long-time NFL line coach John Benton all believe they have the best Abe Lucas at right tackle the Seahawks have had yet.
“Yeah, he’s just been incredibly resilient to come back and push,” Macdonald said at the end of last season. “I know he hasn’t been feeling a hundred percent the whole way, but to put himself kind of back out there and take a leap of faith physically after he’d been battling this thing for a couple of years to come out and play productive football for us and really for him and his career is good.
“I’m happy that he’s healthy, and going into the offseason healthy.”
The tackles’ contracts
Lucas is entering the fourth and final year of his rookie contract. So is starting left tackle Charles Cross.
The Seahawks have a league deadline of May 1 to exercise their contract option they have for a fifth year on Cross; each NFL team get fifth-year options on every first-round pick. Seattle selected Cross ninth overall in the the 2022 draft, two rounds before they got Lucas.
Cross has started at left tackle for the team every week since the first one of his rookie season out of Mississippi State. The option would guarantee him an expected $17.6 million to play for the Seahawks in 2026.
The TNT has learned the Seahawks and general manager John Schneider may pick up that option on Cross, to effectively buy more time to sign him to a multi-year extension beyond next year. That would be at a better salary-cap charge to the team for 2026 than the option’s $17.6 million.
Asked this week whether the team intends to pick up Cross’ option, Schneider said: “We’ll answer that at a later date.”
Lucas will answer now that he is as pumped — and as healthy — as he’s been for a season since he was a Coug at WSU.
That has the Seahawks thinking they have tackles primed, still just 24 and 26 years old, to be bookends on an otherwise iffy offensive line.
“I’m excited about the future,” Lucas said. “I know my ability. I know what I’m capable of.
“I know I love this team and I love this organization, and I love my coaches. And I love, love where Mike’s taking it.
“I mean, he’s the man, and so I’m ready for whatever comes next.”
Projecting Seattle’s NFL draft
What comes next, of course, is the draft.
The Seahawks have the 18th pick in round one Thursday. They have five choices in the first 92 selections through the third round that ends Friday night.
So if Lucas is back as healthy as he’s been in the NFL, and Cross seems destined to get extended in the next eight days, why do we have Seattle taking a college offensive tackle in the first round of the TNT’s annual mock draft?
Because most in the league believe Kelvin Banks Jr. could start in the NFL right now — at guard.
Banks is a heralded left tackle from the University of Texas. The 6-5, 315-pound stud was the Lombardi and Outland Trophy award winner at tackle last season. He allowed just four sacks in 1,544 pass blocks over three seasons for the Longhorns.
Best for Seattle: Banks can “run off the ball,” the phrase Macdonald and Schneider keep using for the new outside-zone blocking system Kubiak, Dennison and Benton are installing.
Best player available meets need. And if they decide not to extend Cross’ and Lucas’ contratcts, if Lucas’ knee remains a problem in 2025, the Seahawks would have Banks to be their next tackle.
Thus, the team could have its two tackles plus left guard settled. Center and right guard remain iffy, though Macdonald liked what he got from Sataoa Laumea as the third option starting at right guard the last games of last season.
Olu Oluwatimi, Seattle’s 2023 draft choice, lost his job when the team signed veteran Connor Williams last summer. When Williams abruptly retired in the middle of last season, Oluwatimi started the rest of the games.
Macdonald and Schneider said Jalen Sundell, the versatile, undrafted rookie last year from North Dakota State, may fit the line’s new, wide-zone system at center this year. That is, better than the potpourri of schemes (inside zone, pulling, drive blocking) since-fired offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb and former line coach Scott Huff used in 2024.
By the standards of the Seahawks’ O-line the last decade, it could be major progress.
This story was originally published April 23, 2025 at 2:21 PM.
